LED w/PWM

Overview

An LED current can be limited with a Pulse Width Modulation signal. Netduino includes 6 hardware PWM generators, available on digital pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11:

Netduino.Foundation Support

Netduino.Foundation includes a number of classes that make driving LEDs with PWM signals easy. They include the ability to control the PWM by setting the brightness, and even have built-in animations.

PwmLed Class

The PwmLed class represents an LED whose voltage (and brightness) is controlled by the duty-cycle of a PWM signal. Can be used both with LEDs that have been current limited with in-series resistors, or LEDs without resistors.

RgbPwmLed Class

The RgbPwmLed class represents an RGB LED whose color is controlled by the duty-cycle of three PWM signals. Can be used both with LEDs that have been current limited with in-series resistors, or LEDs without resistors.

Low-Level Code Example

A PWM signal can be manually configured by either setting the duty cycle, as a percentage of on time, or by manually configuring the period and duration.

While we recommend using Netduino.Foundation to control LEDs, the following low-level illustrates manually controlling an LED by setting pin 3 to duty cycle of 50%, and the onboard LED to a duty cycle of 33% (by manually setting the period and duration and cycles between the two:

using System;
using Microsoft.SPOT;
using SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware;
using SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.Netduino;
using Microsoft.SPOT.Hardware;
using System.Threading;

namespace DrivingLED_w_PWM
{
    /// <summary>
    /// This program illustrates how to drive an LED with a Pulse-Width
    /// Modulation signal.
    /// </summary>
    public class Program
    {
        public static void Main()
        {
            // Create a PWM signal on Pin 3 @ 1000Hz and
            // 50% duty cycle
            PWM dutyCyclePwm = new PWM(PWMChannels.PWM_PIN_D3, 1000,
               .5, false);
            // note that only certain pins support PWM. the
            // PWMChannels enumeration lists the ones that do.

            // Create a PWM signal on the onboard LED by specifying
            // the period and duration in milliseconds. this will be 
            //  a 33% duty cycle (on 1/3rd of the time)
            PWM periodDurationPwm = new PWM (
                PWMChannels.PWM_ONBOARD_LED, 3, 1,
                PWM.ScaleFactor.Milliseconds, false);

            // alternate between the 50% duty cycle and the 33% duty
            // cycle every second
            while (true) {
                dutyCyclePwm.Start ();
                Thread.Sleep (1000);
                dutyCyclePwm.Stop ();

                periodDurationPwm.Start ();
                Thread.Sleep (1000);
                periodDurationPwm.Stop ();
            }
        }
    }
}